What’s New on Twitter?

You may have noticed recently that Twitter looks a bit different. If you aren’t on Twitter, you might want to consider advertising your brand and connecting with your customers on it. This extremely powerful social media platform has approximately 328 million monthly users who go to Twitter to find out what’s going on in the world, in their area, and with the brands and influencers they follow. Throughout this blog, we’ll go over the recent changes to Twitter and some other features you may already be familiar with.

Twitter Moments (see the image below as an example) came on the scene last year. You may have noticed that there’s now a tab at the top of the homepage for moments (as well on users’ profiles like their number of tweets and likes). In a manner similar to Stories on Snapchat, users create Moments on Twitter by selecting tweets that are generated into a slideshow. Viewers browsing through Mentions look at the cover photos and the title of each slideshow as they decide what to scroll through. Users can also like and retweet Moments on their own profiles. In another move that makes Twitter more competitive with Snapchat, Twitter now allows users to use emoticons and stickers on photos before tweeting them.

Now available on both the iOS and the Android Twitter app, Twitter Highlights provides users with a slideshow showcasing the most popular tweets in their network and their local areas. Furthermore, these curated tweets are personalized for each user.

The feature combs through conversations and popular tweets within your network as well as topics and events that are trending in your area or network. To open Twitter Highlights, tap on your profile photo (which appears to the left of “Home” at the top of the screen), and the menu will open up. Tap on Highlights, and you’ll be able to scroll through the top tweets in your timeline. You’ll notice that in Highlights, the photos and videos attached to tweets appear above the text of the tweet.

Explore

The search bar at the top of Twitter is more than just a search bar. It’s designed to connect you to information that is relevant to your search term and similar search terms. Look for the bar with the search icon and enter search terms relevant to your topics of interest. You can look up hashtags and see other hashtags that are relevant and trending. Trends For You and Today’s Moments. It’s also possible to browse through tweets by category, like Entertainment, Lifestyle, Sports, Popular Culture, News, Featured, and more.

Photo Credit: httpss://twitter.com/square1group

Interface

Twitter gathered responses from the existing community and crafted adjustments to the platform’s user interface. Overall, these changes are meant to make Twitter easier to use and easy-to-understand across countries. It won’t be long before you notice that profile photos are now circular images (instead of a box-shape) and that the headlines are bolder. The Header Photo (like the cover photo on Facebook) is still there. Several users immediately noticed that the button you click on or tap on to tweet content has changed from an icon of a quill to the word “Tweet” and that the reply icon (an arrow) changed into a speech bubble. Our favorite new feature is that the metrics on a tweet are now updated in real-time. You can immediately see how many replies, retweets, and likes a tweet is getting and measure the success of your efforts. Brand or make your profile stand out by changing your theme color. That’s right; you can edit the theme to your heart’s content. And lastly, we think the new settings menu and smaller toolbars make Twitter’s new look cleaner and easier to use.

Looking at a profile page, you’ll see that Tailored Trends underneath the profile photo and Who To Follow underneath the Explore bar offer users new content to find and follow. It’s easier than ever to create a network on Twitter and find the content you’re looking for.

Longer Tweets

Users are excited to report that their twitter usernames no longer count toward the 140-character maximum policy on Twitter. You can craft your tweets without worrying how much space your username takes up in the post. It may not sound like big change, but when you’re restricted to only 140 characters, every bit adds up.

Direct Messaging

We remember when direct messaging was brand new on the Twitter platform. It wasn’t long ago that the direct messaging feature on Twitter was not very complicated. It functioned like two users sending 140 character-long messages to each other. Now, web link previews appear in direct messaging on Twitter and users also get read receipts when their friends read their messages.

Twitter Tips

-Try not to let your followers to following ratio get too out of balance. Remember to go back and unfollow users who aren’t following you back.

-Like the tweets of others in your network. They will be encouraged to engage with you and follow you back.

-Find the influencers in your area of interest and begin joining the conversations they are having on the network. Make yourself visible and show that you have a valuable presence in the community.

-Tweets that include images, links, and videos get more engagement overall

-Tweet on a regular basis and publish regular content

Nine out of 10 companies have a Twitter account and approximately 500 million tweets are posted across the network daily. Twitter is a powerhouse that cannot be ignored. We hope this post has helped you better navigate the new features of Twitter.

Square 1 Group is a web development firm that creates efficient and cutting-edge websites for clients from a variety of industries. We also provide maintenance and support and offer assistance with content creation, online marketing strategies, lead generation, and more. Feel free to contact us today to learn about the latest trends in social media.